<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful by hellodeer</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673244">big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellodeer/pseuds/hellodeer'>hellodeer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X1 (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:54:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673244</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellodeer/pseuds/hellodeer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There are giants in the sky, as Eunsang finds out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Challenge #7 — Mix It Up</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>big, tall, terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What do you mean magic beans, Eunsang-ah?” Dongpyo frowns. He plays with the strings that hang from his red hoodie as he throws a suspicious look to the small pot Eunsang is watering.</p><p>“I got them from a noona at M Countdown,” Eunsang says. He looks at the blue pot, at the wet soil, expecting something, anything to happen. Nothing does.</p><p>“What? How much was it? Eunsang-ah, she scammed you!” Dongpyo exclaims. It’s cute that he’s angry on Eunsang’s behalf, and maybe a little bit exasperated too, like he expected Eunsang to know better than to trust a random noona offering him magic beans.</p><p>“She just gave them to me,” he shrugs. He places the pot on the floor, tucked between the couch and the wall, out of the way so no one will trip on it. “She said, ‘hey, you look like you could use some magic beans’, so I said ‘sure!’”</p><p>Dongpyo scoffs. Then, sarcasm dripping from his tongue, asks ”Are you sure you didn’t trade your cow for them or something?”</p><p>Eunsang blinks. “I’ve never had a cow, Dongpyo-yah.”</p><p>Dongpyo buries his face in his hands, groaning.</p><p>Minhee wanders into the living room then, only one shoe on.</p><p>“Guys, have you seen my shoe?”</p><p>*</p><p>When they get home the next day, fresh off another music show win, energy and adrenaline still high despite the late hour, Eunsang’s beanstalk is tall enough to reach his knees.</p><p>“See!” he tells Dongpyo, crouching to get a better look at his baby. The green stalk twists around itself, holding itself up, with a few leaves here and there. It’s beautiful. “I told you they were magical.”</p><p>“Just because it grows fast doesn’t mean it’s magical,” Dongpyo says. He pulls the sleeves of his red hoodie over his hands and he comes closer to inspect the beanstalk too, a look of disbelief on his face.</p><p>Junho, Hyeongjun and Dohyon also gather around the pot.</p><p>“That’s pretty cool,” Junho says. His hair is getting long, falling into his eyes, and he pushes his bangs aside with delicate fingers.</p><p>“It’s not that cool,” Dongpyo mutters, at the same time as Dohyon says “Put it on the windowsill, hyung, that way it can get more sunlight.”</p><p>Eunsang nods. Picks up the pot and arranges it on the windowsill, the leaves turned towards the glass.</p><p>“Done!” Hyeongjun claps. “Now let’s all shower and go to bed. We have school tomorrow.”</p><p>“Nooo,” Dohyon whines. “Agony. Misery!”</p><p>Hyeongjun laughs, hugging Dohyon as they walk away.</p><p>*</p><p>Eunsang wakes up with a start, sitting up and hands flying to the front of his face to protect himself from imminent danger. When a few seconds pass and nothing happens — Dohyon keeps snoring, unperturbed —, he lowers his hands and blinks into the darkness of the room. It’s six in the morning, his phone tells him. He doesn’t have to be up for another hour, but then he remembers what woke him: a crash, noisy and terrifying, from somewhere outside the room.</p><p>He ventures into the living room on tiptoes, careful not to wake the others or alert any intruders of his presence, but there’s no one there.</p><p>There’s this instead:</p><p>Eunsang’s beanstalk, enormous. Going up, up, up, <i>up</i>, right through the shattered glass of the broken window, until it reaches the clouds. Until it’s above the clouds.</p><p>Eunsang blinks, shocked. He approaches slowly, eyes adjusting to the light as the sun slowly comes up, thinking maybe he’s still dreaming.</p><p>He’s not. He touches the beanstalk and it’s real, green and dry and <i>huge</i>. He sticks his head through the whole in the window, careful of the glass shreds, trying to see if he can locate the other end of the beanstalk. </p><p>He can’t.</p><p>Curiosity fills him: where does it end? How high up does it go? Suddenly, he wants nothing more than to find out.</p><p>Eunsang gingerly hops onto the beanstalk. It’s sturdy under his feet, the stalk thick and wide, with leaves he can grab to propel himself up. He climbs and climbs and climbs, only looking back once to find the dorm and the rest of Seoul are mere dots below him.</p><p>It’s windy, but he’s not scared. He says hello to birds that fly by, watches in fascination as an airplane zooms right next to him, then keeps going up and up and up.</p><p>When he’s starting to get tired — he still has to climb back down and go to school, then practice, he really shouldn’t be wasting energy early in the morning — and it seems like the beanstalk will never end, it does.</p><p>It ends just above a castle-shaped cloud that turns out to be an actual castle. Eunsang finds his feet on firm, solid stone after jumping off the beanstalk.</p><p>“Hello?” he asks the empty hallway, voice echoing back at him.</p><p>It’s silent for a few seconds. Then <i>thump, thump, thump!</i>, the ground shakes as a figure approaches, turning a corner and coming face to face with Eunsang.</p><p>She’s so tall. Probably as tall as the three-story building where he lives, probably <i>taller</i>. She’s wearing a dress but she’s barefoot, and she bends down to look at Eunsang curiously. </p><p>He wonders if this is how ants feel.</p><p>“Hello,” he says again. “Sorry for coming in uninvited.”</p><p>She tilts her head to the side, says something in a language Eunsang doesn’t understand. It suddenly hits him that the beans <i>were</i> magical, and that Dongpyo will wake up to see the beanstalk and realize he was wrong, and also that he should have probably left a note.</p><p>“I have to go,” he says to the lady giant. She frowns, gesturing for him to come further inside the castle. “My friends will be worried about me, and I have school—”</p><p>But she keeps waving her hands, inviting him, pleading. Eunsang looks back over his shoulder to where the beanstalk is, then at the giant.</p><p>“Okay,” he smiles at her. “I guess I can stay a bit.”</p><p>He follows her inside.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title from, you guessed it, "giants in the sky" from the musical into the woods. also some other references to the musical along the fic!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>